In Gratitude.

Tonight was rehearsal night for one of my many brilliant combos and it was held at Dave Fredenburg's warehouse. We ripped into the truly fantastic "Baba O'Reilly" by the Who and right where the three-chord windmill starts to kick in I bit down on a particularly sweet and juicy piece of Easter gum. In that moment the little black Cloud that has lived over my head for five years dissolved into the air and the sun shone the way it does after a spring shower. I felt such a burst of love for everyone in my life and such a wave of sympathy and understanding for my own sorry brutalized psyche that it was as if some higher being had waved a hand over my grave and banished the demons for an instant.
And I thought about the pain I've endured in my attempts to be noteworthy, and I thought about my long, slow fall, and I thought about the people who sought in vain to catch me as I sped past them. And I thought about how it feels to live so far away from the sun, so in thrall to my own trajectory, so eager to barrel through to the end and rest, rest, rest.
And in that moment, right in that F-C-Bb universe, right before The Cloud reintegrated and the rain picked up, I experienced something akin to being able to take a deep breath as if something huge sitting on my chest had shifted position. And I'm holding it now, and I think I can hold it for a while. Maybe until the next Baba O'Reilly. Maybe until Spring. And I realized that most other people probably live that way a lot of the time, in the sun, and maybe I could too if I took a little care of myself and helped myself to a little something sweet and chewy. Like other people do.
Is that what people do? Do they line up sweets along the way? Because I think I could do that if I had Permission. I think I could.
See, I never lived that way. I've always been a thing that I throw at the world. And I don't know what one does.
Do you know that a person can just sort of lack a talent for living? I think it's an aptitude like playing trombone. Isn't that weird to think of? Is that what depression is? Losing the talent for living? Is there a class somewhere, like in those magazines? Draw a well-lived life and win a prize?
Anyway, thanks to Pete and John and Roger and Keith.